University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Undergraduate Humanities Forum 2007-2008: Penn Humanities Forum Undergraduate Origins Research Fellows April 2008 Origins of Unity and Communalism in Gujarat, India Rajiv Bhagat University of Pennsylvania Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2008 Bhagat, Rajiv, "Origins of Unity and Communalism in Gujarat, India" (2008). Undergraduate Humanities Forum 2007-2008: Origins. 2. https://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2008/2 2007-2008 Penn Humanities Forum on Origins, Undergraduate Mellon Research Fellows. URL: http://humanities.sas.upenn.edu/07-08/uhf_fellows.shtml This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/uhf_2008/2 For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Origins of Unity and Communalism in Gujarat, India Abstract "Before I tell you what happened to in 2002…Do you know the history behind this? Do you understand the origins, how all this started?" To the majority of residents living in the city of Rajkot in the state of Gujarat, India the 2002 riots are comprehensible only as addendums to a kind of perennial Hindu-Muslim communal conflict that they describe as having waged for "many years" in the region. But, the central ambiguity to decipher is this term "many years." While it might seem as if residents are referring to a historically significant time period beginning in the medieval ages and concluding now, within minutes of interviewing them, regardless of their gender, class, age or religion, it becomes clear that even ancient history to them is in fact the history of India's independence. The term "many years" is specifically referring to a fairly recent 1990's decade of violent Hindu-Muslim relations, sparked by destruction of the Ayodhya mosque in 2002.